July 18 – From Way Up to Way Down
One of the things I (Esther) had been looking forward to this trip was my booked trip to go paragliding over Interlaken. When I booked it, I decided to book it early in our time here so that if there was messy weather and I had to reschedule there would be lots of time to make this happen. So I booked it early in the day our first full morning here. And then it was on weather watching all this week. Today we woke up to cloudy weather and a little rain but by the time we were boarding the van to go up the mountain to the launch place it was just cloudy so it was a perfect time to go.
On the van, there were the 7 customers and 7 pilots. When we got to the launch area, we met our pilot and as I was alone (nobody else wanted to do it) we quickly got up in the air and we were slowly flying along the tree line and through the low fog from the early morning rain. Over the town site they are allowed to do stunts so after the go ahead, my pilot Simon, quickly started flipping and turning us all around. It was amazing! Back on the ground it was off to find Patrick and Tori (they missed it all) and back to get Sable before getting going for the day.
Today we drove down to Kanderstag and then on to see if we could spot the Matterhorn. To get to the other side of this mountain, we ended up boarding a train (in the car) and it took us over like a ferry at home would. Unfortunately, the cloudy weather didn’t allow us to do that but we were able to see lots of waterfalls and beautiful mountains.
We booked tickets to go to a Subterranean Lake to do a boat tour in a cave. One a hot day, it was a wonderful 15 degrees. If we had known, they do concerts on the water…how amazing the acoustics would be there.
Heading back to the camp ground, we went through Gstaad. This is one of the most expensive areas to shop in the world.
Back at the campground the skies have opened up so a rainy night will likely mean an early night. Tomorrow we will make our way around here too see what cable cars/trains we can get on and to where. Should be a great day!
